Happy happy, Joy joy: Cookie dough!

Two of the best words one can say: Cookie. Dough. I grew up in a family of cookie dough makers. You will note, we were dough makers, not cookie bakers. We would just make a bowl of dough and kept it in the fridge. Only silly mortals defile the dough by placing it in the hellish gates of the oven. The recipe for these Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Cookies came from one of one of my favorite blogs, Joy the Baker. The conceit is that you make cookie dough balls in advance, freeze them, then bake later. If I had my druthers I would never bake this. But come Friday I’ve a buddhist BBQ to go to and I promised dessert so eventually I will make these into cookies. Let me clarify that it is a BBQ attended by mostly by buddhists, we will not be putting buddhists on the barbie.
I altered the recipe just a tad to make sure that the dough would be safe to eat raw. I hope it makes it to Friday.
Whole Wheat Chocolate Cookie Dough(adapted from Joy the Baker)
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
10 Tbsp. white flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup stevia or splenda for baking
1/4 cup pasteurized eggs
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
1/2 cup chocolate chips(I used Ghiradelli bittersweet)
Cream butter and sugars. Blend in eggs and vanilla, stir in dry ingredients and lastly chocolate chips. Bake or not, your choice, but make the right one.

Un-texas-afying a recipe aka making it healthier

Brunch Enchiladas? Tortillas filled with spicy cheese and baked in a bath of eggy creamy spicy goodness? Yeah, baby. This recipe from Texas Blossoms was an opportunity for me to use up more of the soy turkey I’d bought, as well as some half and half and cheese that was on its last legs. But like most Tex-mex, it was also a bit in need of lightening up. I subbed in whole wheat tortillas and flour in the sauce, almond milk for some of the half and half, low-fat cheese, and soy ground turkey for ham. This was really good, the only thing I’d do differently would be to roll the tortillas tighter next time. They were loosely rolled and puffed up over the cream/egg mixture and got a bit dry on top. Otherwise I totally dug this:
Brunch Enchiladas(adapted from Texas Blossoms)
Mix:
1/2 cup meat substitute
1/4 cup diced green chilies(the kind you get in a can)
3 oz. reduced fat sharp cheddar
1/4 cup chopped green onions
Divide this between 4 whole wheat tortillas, roll, and put in a 8×8 baking dish.
Mix:
3 eggs
1/4 cup almond milk
3/4 cup half and half
1 1/2 tsp. whole wheat flour
1/8 tsp. garlic powder
dash of tabasco
Pour over rolled tortillas, cover and refrigerate about 4-8 hours. Remove about a half hour before baking then bake, covered for about 20-30 minutes then uncovered for 20-30 more at 350 degrees. Use your senses, if it looks done way early, it probably is, if it still seems underdone, cook it longer:)

Soggy bread:this food looks extra gruel-ish and tastes extra scrumptious

Normally I am not too into the meat substitutes. But I was lured in by the promise of soggy bread. In the form of biscuits and gravy. More specifically this Food and Wine Magazine recipe for Whole Wheat Biscuits with Creamy Sausage Gravy. The fact that the gravy contains chipotles in adobo was reason enough for me to believe I’d like this. Soggy bread AND spicy sauce? YUM. For that, I went out and purchased Yves Veggie Cuisine Meatless Ground Turkey.
And the bicuits, lemme tell you, at first blush the recipe looks like one for fairly standard whole wheat biscuits, but, AHA! is that kosher salt it calls for? Oh yeah. The kosher salt provides some textural intrigue as the grains are large and add random bits of crunch to the biscuit. YUM again. The original recipe is here and this was my half-recipe vegetarian adaptation(single vegetarians of the world rejoice):
Biscuits:
1/2 + 2 TB. all purpose flour
1/4 cup whole wheat flour
3/4 tsp. baking powder
1/8 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. kosher salt(important!)
3 TB. butter
6 TB. buttermilk
Preheat oven to 425. Whisk dry ingredients, cut in butter, stir in buttermilk until dough almost comes together. Dump it out, knead until it is just barely a cohesive mass. Pat out 1/2 inch thick and make biscuits whatever size and shape makes you happy.
Bake about 20 minutes.
Gravy
1/2 package vegetarian ground turkey substitute
1 tsp. ground sage
1 chipotle in adobo, minced
1/4 tsp. each of salt n pepper(freshly ground)
1 Tbsp. whole wheat flour
1 cup skim milk
1 Tbsp. snipped chives
Cook and break up fake meat in a medium pan over medium high heat. Stir in sage, chipotles, salt, pepper and flour. Cook one minute. Add milk, simmer until thick, about five minutes. Pour on biscuits and enjoy.
If you are odd like me and like to eat foods that are supposed to be hot, cold, save some gravy in the fridge. The next day it is super thick and good. Possibly even better though it won’t make your biscuits soggy…